In its latest blog post, BioCatch has some words of advice for Payments Canada and other financial institutions that are upgrading their systems to support faster payments. The behavioral biometrics company argues that financial institutions need to be prepared with real-time fraud prevention strategies in order to head off an impending wave of financial crime.

BioCatch specifically cites the UK example, where fraud
jumped 300 percent between 2008 and 2010 after faster payments were
implemented, explaining that while faster payments are more convenient, they
also carry a degree of risk. Since money moves so quickly, fraudulently taken
funds are almost impossible to trace and recover once they leave the original
account.

Meanwhile, an overwhelming 97 percent of malware attacks incorporate some form of social engineering, whether it’s a vishing scam or cross-channel fraud. That means that passwords alone are not enough to guard against fraud, largely because there’s often nothing wrong with the security system itself. In most cases of fraud, people are being tricked into giving up their credentials or completing what at first appears to be a legitimate transaction.

That’s why it’s so important to stop fraudulent transactions
before they occur, and behavioral biometrics offers a potential solution. According
to BioCatch, UK banks that incorporated behavioral biometric security enjoyed a
24 percent reduction in payment fraud.

Behavioral biometric technology builds unique profiles and can detect even the slightest change in a user’s habits, offering passive and continuous authentication to make modern financial services safer and more convenient.